Cavechat.org

it already has.

It's called getting engaged. It starts with just a few females infected with the "marriage" pathogen who lure their males close enough to become infected. This results in erratic behaviour in both parties usually characterized by a euporic state, impulsive actions, increased intimacy, and rapid depleting of financial reserves often in an attempt to gratify and to add showy adornments to the female and resulting in various public displays. Both the males and females generally become more vocal, particularly with each other. Both individuals typically will virtually abandon their former social groups. This results in other females in the immediate social group trying to reconcile with and emulate the infected female by also becoming infected and luring their males (or free-ranging males they are able to attract) into the same destructive cycle. Males are typically lured in by the promise of promiscuity that is usually short-lived or never materializes at all. Some resistant individuals of both sexes may fight off the infection and return to their former pre-infected condition but normally this results in a severing of the social relationship with the forrmer partner and/or abandonment. Once the pathogen runs it's course those unable to fight off the infection enter the "marriage" state. For most males this is considered analogous to death. Females may persist in this state for some years but eventually they too succumb psychologically.

Another thing that is important is how long would the halt be on caving if the whole state was closed for caving for many years, I would move to a different state. Can't stop the caving! (But if a state was closed for caving that long, most likely that would be for ridiculous reasons - people just wanting to control other people).

The best way to conserve or protect the caves is really to stay out of them. But what fun would that be.

I suppose a worst case scenario is that WNS turns out to also affect people and thus cave owners/managers would close them for liability reasons.

The most likely scenario is that WNS is initiated by some outside source, is mainly transmitted bat-bat and that people can be an incidental means of transporting the infection to new areas. In this case the caves would likely only be closed a year or two in most cases to evaluate the how and why of human transport, since the bats would spread the disease anyway. The other issue might be that if the disease can be contained in the NE due to bats not interacting with other areas, then those caves found to be infected may be closed permanently to prevent transprt to other areas *if* people are confirmed as being able to transport it.

Until proven otherwise, it is also just as likely that humans don't have a thing to do with
transporting or passing along WNS from cave to cave or bat colony to bat colony.

Actually I think it is most likely that humans do not play a role currently, and that it is quite possible they Can't play a role in spreading it at all. But in the absence of any proof one way or the other, and given the severe nature of the problem, we need to err on the side of caution at least initially.

wyandottecaver wrote:Actually I think it is most likely that humans do not play a role currently, and that it is quite possible they Can't play a role in spreading it at all. But in the absence of any proof one way or the other, and given the severe nature of the problem, we need to err on the side of caution at least initially.

Agreed.
Love those s

Time to wise up. The issue of caver caused contanimation should be tested. I had visted some of the caves in question during the Howecavern cleanup 2007. Prior to the next cave trip I rinsed the equipment off with the hose but did'nt use soap or bleach. The scientests researching the problem are using the white suits to go into known infected sites. Good science dictates that the suits should be tested to see if their carrying any pathogen hitchhikers or not. I plan on letting them have my suit for testing. I was going to order a new one from Cecilia anyway.

one problem is we don't know yet what we are even looking for. fungus, virus, bacteria, biotoxin, etc. In that circumstance, testing the suits (or anything else) becomes problematic. The tyvek suits are used because they can be destroyed after each trip thus negating the need to identify anything.

The current focus is on trying to ID a culprit then testing proceedures can be developed to screen for it.